Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Does Senator Gerard P. Craughwell accept that a governing body, with its many representatives — external, internal, administrative, academic and student, as provided for in the legislation — has a right to decide how many representatives of the student body it should have on the academic council? It is the experience to do so. Someone's dictating that students not be represented on the council would not be upheld by the governing body, bearing in mind the level of external, internal, academic, administrative and student representation. One would not get away with it, nor would someone carry on like that because, from my experience, universities are pretty good at democratic handling. There is considerable representation of students in faculties and other areas and there are also school representatives. There are year representatives and also postgraduate representatives.We can over-legislate, as it were, and their hands are tied either way. The governing body in the technological university should make its decision, which would be good, and not have to answer to some appalling director. This amendment is a little conspiratorial and I am inclined to listen to the Minister of State's argument on it.

I am also a great believer in keeping universities at arm's length because they need freedom to legislate for how they want things to be done on their respective campuses. Perhaps one or other governing body will want four student representatives on the academic council. I doubt any of them would get away with having no student representatives.